coronavirus pandemic

Biden Asks US Intel Officials to ‘Redouble' Efforts on Determining COVID-19 Origins

The intelligence community has been unable to reach a “definitive conclusion” on whether the virus came from contact with an animal or a laboratory accident, Biden said

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President Joe Biden has asked the intelligence community to "redouble" their efforts to get to the bottom of the origins of the coronavirus after new reports raised questions about whether it spread from a Wuhan laboratory in China, NBC News reports.

Biden said the intelligence community has been unable to reach a “definitive conclusion” on the origins of the virus and is conflicted on whether it came from human contact with an infected animal or a laboratory accident, Biden said in a statement.

“As of today, the U.S. intelligence community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said in a statement.

The president's comments come after a U.S. intelligence report said three lab workers in Wuhan, China, fell ill in November 2019, before the first coronavirus cases were reported, adding to circumstantial evidence for a hypothesis that the virus could have escaped from a lab in the city.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

NBC has an exclusive look inside the Wuhan lab working to track the origins of the new coronavirus.
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